Vehicles such as vans, minivans, and sport-utility vehicles are increasingly incorporating sliding-door systems to provide easy and quick access to an interior compartment of the vehicle. Such sliding-door systems are gaining popularity, as such systems allow a body-side opening of the vehicle to be completely open while concurrently maintaining a door panel of the sliding-door system in close proximity to a body-side aperture of the vehicle. Maintaining the door in close proximity to the body-side aperture such that the door is substantially parallel to the body-side aperture when the door is in an open state allows the door to be moved from a closed state to the open state without requiring a large space between the vehicle and an adjacent vehicle or a garage wall, for example.
While conventional sliding-door systems adequately provide quick and easy access to an interior compartment of a vehicle and, further, are maintained in close proximity to a body-side panel, conventional sliding-door systems require the vehicle in which the system is installed to include a substantially flat body-side profile to permit the sliding-door system to function properly. Namely, conventional sliding-door systems can only be installed on vehicles having a relatively small degree of body-side curvature to allow the sliding-door system to concurrently accommodate three separate track mechanisms and to permit the door to be placed adjacent and substantially parallel to the side panel of the vehicle when the door is in the open state.
Providing a vehicle with a reduced or relatively small degree of body-side curvature, however, negatively impacts and limits the styling and overall appearance of the vehicle. In short, the added functionality provided by implementing conventional sliding-door systems often comes at the expense of the styling and overall appearance of the vehicle.